Microtones are best understood by laymen such as myself as the infinite number of notes BETWEEN the 12 keys that make up an octave on a piano. They are easy enough to play – physically – on wind and string instruments or with the human voice. Microtonal works for keyboard, on the other hand, require specially-built or else “modified” instruments.
Inspired by discoveries of Eastern music as well as by the formal freedom unleashed by the 12-tone composers in the early modern era, many of the 20th century’s great composers employed microtones for various effects. They can be hauntingly pretty, as in the Enescu and Panufnik pieces that bookend this mix, they can be used as sour-sounding bludgeons, and they can be everything in between. Some composers, notably Ives and Bartok, used microtones to reproduce sounds they heard in the field, while remaining tonally anchored. Others, like Julián Carrillo, Alois Haba and Ben Johnston, built their oeuvres around microtones. And then there’s Harry Partch, who created a 43-tone octave and built a phalanx of instruments to play the music he wrote. This mix includes a Baroque-era piece by Nikola Vicentino and two movements from the American composer Gloria Coates’s “Symphony in Microtones,” aka her 14th. I hope you like some or all of it.
paintings by Maximillian Luce (1858-1941)
0:00:00
George Enescu (Romania, 1881-1955): Violin Sonata #3, Op. 25 – 2. Andante Sostenuto E Misterioso
Adelina Oprean (v) & Justin Oprean (p)
Hyperion
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0:08:28
Nicola Vicentino (Italy, 1511-1876)” Musica prisca caput (1555)
Johannes Keller, Archicembalo
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0:11:19
Julián Carrillo (Mexico, 1875-1965): Cromometrofonía
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0:20:00
Charles Ives (U.S.A., 1874-1954): Three Quarter-Tone Pieces for Piano(1903-1923), No. 3 “Chorale”
Alexei Lubimov & Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Erato
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0:24:24
Ivan Wyschnegradsky (USSR, 1893-1979): Troisième Fragment Symphonique, Op.32 (1961)
Martine Joste, Sylvaine Billier, Jean-François Hessier & Jean Koerner
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0:38:10
Bela Bartok (Hungary, 1881-1945): Sonata for Solo Violin, Sz. 114 (1944)
Viktoria Mullova, violin
Hungaroton
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00:43:42
Alois Hába (Czech Republic, 1893-1973): Sonata for Quarter-tone Piano, Op. 62, 1 – Allegro agitato
Vladimir Koula, quarter-tone piano
Supraphon
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0:49:22
Harry Partch (U.S.A., 1901-1974): Windsong
Harry Partch
Columbia
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0:57:59
Giacinto Scelsi (Italy, 1905-1988): Anahit
Hans Zender: Klangforum Vien
Kairos
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1:11:31
Luigi Nono (Italy, 1924-1990): Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatto in Auschwitz (1966)
Stefania Woytowicz, soprano w/ Coro di voci bianche del Piccolo Teatro di Milan
Wergo
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1:22:42
Ben Johnston (U.S., 1926- ): String Quartet No. 5 (1979)
Kepler Quartet
New World Records
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1:36:18
Gloria Coates (U.S., 1938?- ): Symphony No. 14 (Symphony in Microtones);
II. Jargon – Homage to William Billings & III. (1746-1800)
III. The Lonesome Ones – Homage to Otto Luening
Christoph Toppen: Bavarian Radio Symphony
Naxos
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1:50:55
Andrzej Panufnik (Poland/U.K., 1914-1991): Kolysanka (Lullaby)
Lucasz Borowicz: Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra
CPO
Concentration Camp 